The TV and major news outlets have been rife with gloomy stories about the abysmal state of the economy this year in general and during this Christmas season in particular. I’ve also read that Neiman Marcus and other retail stores that cater to the snob trade are reporting a big dip in sales this year. While I don’t dispute everything they’ve been saying, things can’t be as bad as they say, judging by the time it takes to find a parking place near the building at Wal-Mart. I stopped at the Gainesville store the other day to get a box of sugar-free cookies—one of my many vices. The actual time in the store is normally five minutes. I spent twenty minutes circling the parking lot looking for an empty slot. Although I have a handicapped placard, there were no empty handicapped parking spaces. I thought half the employees must be physically disabled and hogging all the parking places. Eventually I got lucky and found a spot a mere hundred yards away from the front door. When playing the parking game, most of the time when a car vacates a space, I’m on the other side of the lot and someone who just drove in gets it.
This afternoon I took my wife to the Sherman Wal-Mart to get "a few things." I've never seen so many people or cars. Getting a parking place took about twenty minutes and waiting on my wife took an additional hour and a half. Times may be hard, but not at Wal-Mart. Perhaps all the people who normally shop at Neiman's and the other brand name stores were there elbow to elbow with the regular Wal-Mart customers--the working class and wetback Mexicans.
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